Psycho (1960) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 1

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Psycho will never make you look at showers in the same way, again!

October is here and that means it’s time for 31 Days of Horror, 2020 edition, as if this year hasn’t been scary enough already! Kicking off this year’s daily look at a variety of horror films is the grandaddy of slasher films, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. It’s the original serial killer film, reviewed on its 60th anniversary. This year, 31 Days of Horror will also be looking at a number of other classic horror films and the seeds they sowed in creating the groundwork and an appeal for scary movies. So don’t dally. Slip into a nice warm bath, and get ready for a film that can still send chills up our spine!

Before Viewing

The trailer for Psycho is rather unique in that there’s very little footage from the film included in it. Alfred Hitchock, the director, takes the audience around to the locations of the film and tells them about the different murders they’ll encounter. It seems like this would be a spoiler, but it’s decidedly anti-spoiler–though there is some clever word play by Hitch in the trailer. “Here’s the woman’s room, still beautifully preserved,” he says. Clever indeed! The trailer shows nothing but a quick shot of the shower scene, yet HItchcock describes the different murders with great detail. The trailer ends with the now-famous statement that no one will be admitted to the film after it has started. Why? The shocking ending is something that must be preserved.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

On a hot day in December in Phoenix, Arizona, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) and her lover Sam Loomis (John Gavin) share a few moments during her lunch break in a small motel room. She’s in love with him but he can’t afford to get married right now and continue to make alimony payments. Marion returns to her job at Lowery Real Estate where a client leaves a deposit of $40,000 for a property. Mr. Lowery (Vaughn Taylor) wants Marion to deposit it at the bank on the way home, but she decides to skip town and steal the money instead.

Marion says she’s headed home early with a headache, but Mr. Lowery see’s her heading out of town later that day. She decides to drive to Fairvale, California where Sam lives but becomes tired and pulls off the side of the road. A police officer rousts her the next morning, seemingly suspicious of her. She drives away nervously, noticing the officer following. She pulls into a used car dealer in Bakersfield and trades in her car for one with California plates. She makes the dealer at the car lot suspicious when offering to pay in cash. The police officer continues to watch her as she pulls out.

She drives into the night when a rainstorm hits. She’s sure that she’s being followed and worried that she’s aroused too many people’s suspicions. Bleary and tired she pulls into a roadside inn, the Bates Motel. She is greeted by Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) who seems shy and nerdy. He has no other guests and offers her a room and a bite to eat. While she puts her clothes away, Marion overhears Norman’s mother shouting at him about bringing a young woman into her house. Norman returns with some supper and they two eat in the parlor behind the office where Norman explains about his taxidermy hobby, and his mother, who is an invalid and overbearing. He still loves her however.

After the awkward, yet enlightening talk, Marion has made a decision to return to Phoenix in the morning. She hides the remainder of her money in a newspaper, and steps into the shower before bed. Suddenly the shower curtain is ripped back and a silhouetted figure stabs Marion several times; blood running down the drain. Norman is heard off camera exclaiming about the blood, and dutifully comes into the bathroom to clean up and dispose of the body–and her belongings, including the newspaper with money–into a nearby swamp.

A week later Marion’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) arrives at Sam’s hardware business in Fairvale confronting him. They are overheard by private investigator Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam) who has been hired to find Marion and the money, trying not to involve the police. After investigating several local motels he stumbles on the Bates Motel and Norman. Arbogast is suspicious of Norman’s flip-flopping story, and decides to question his mother, whom he saw in the window. As Arbogast mounts the stairs to talk to Mrs. Bates, a woman runs out of her room and kills him. Norman then cleans up a second mess and moves his mother to the fruit cellar.

When Arbogast doesn’t return, Lila and Sam talk to the sheriff who tells them that he’s not sure who the woman with Norman is. Mrs. Bates died 10 years ago. The pair decide to investigate alone anyway, posing as husband and wife. Sam distracts Norman while Lila snoops around the house. She makes her way into the basement where she finds Mrs. Bates–a mummified corpse. Lila is attacked by Norman with a knife–and wearing a wig and a dress–but Sam is able to subdue him. Later at the courthouse a psychiatrist reveals Norman’s personality split, which causes him to be both Norman and “mother,” and that the “mother” persona has taken over completely. Mrs. Bates’ voice echoes in Norman’s head that she was right in informing on Norman, as she would never hurt a fly.

“She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes.” – Norman Bates

Psycho is the first entry in the horror origins (aka H-Origins) category of 31 Days of Horror. These are films that are cornerstone films in the genre that have defined new genre elements and set the stage for all horror films that came after. And even with all this weight, it’s one of those films that almost didn’t happen. At this time director Alfred Hitchcock was already known as the master of suspense. By 1960, when Psycho was released, he had been making films in the United States for 20 years ( having worked in England for 20 years prior to that). His thrillers were numerous and popular. Rope (1948), Dial M For Murder and Rear Window (both in 1954), Vertigo (1958) and North by Northwest (1959) were only some of his blockbusters. So when he optioned the 1959 story of Psycho from Robert Bloch’s book of the same name, no other studio was interested in making it. The studio he was working with at that time, Paramount, had already passed on the film, sure that it was an unfilmable property. Hitchcock’s initial budget requests were too expensive, so he decided to finance it himself and film at Universal–where his successful television series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, was half way through its 10 year run. Opting to shoot it in black and white, using his television crew, and signing Janet Leigh for a fraction of her normal price, he moved on to make the film that he is most closely identified with.

Psycho is often referred to as a horror film, even though it is mainly in the suspense and thriller mold of Hitchock’s previous films. The first act of the film completely subverts the horror aspects of the later acts. It uses Hitchcock’s clever misdirection and the plot device of the stolen $40,000 to convince viewers that this is the important information. The suspense of the police officer stopping Marion–did someone report the money missing? Marion trading in her car and racing out of the dealers when someone yells stop! Has she been found out? No, she just forgot her suitcase. These moments move the audience into the realm of worrying if she’ll be caught. Marion later worries that Norman may come in and discover the money so she hides it meticulously in a newspaper. The reality that Hitchcock creates is that Norman doesn’t care about the money at all. These types of moments are ingrained in Hitch’s audiences as these are the same types of attention to details that fans of his movies have been paying attention to for years. The slow building suspense of what may happen to a character define his work. His personal definition of suspense was showing the audience the bomb under the table, and letting two characters sit and have a discussion about the weather for 5 minutes. Nerve-wracking! Very much a different type of horror film than modern examples.

Hitchcock knew he had a great plot with the film and an amazing surprise for audiences. He also knew how to market to the audience. It could potentially be termed as a gimmick, but his trailer for Psycho and the orders not to admit anyone after the film started, or to tell your friends about the ending was one of the first attempts to craft spoiler warnings. He took steps to make sure the audiences knew there were surprises in store for them, but just not which one. This was not necessarily a new invention, as the 1955 French film Les Diabolique had a similar warning in the final credits–to not spoil the ending for others. At this time other directors were also creating gimmicks to entice viewers to leave their TVs behind and come to the movies. William Castle’s film from the previous year, The Tingler was one such film that used a gimmick of random buzzers on chairs in the theater. These would randomly jolt the audience member when the monster, a fear induced creature, was on screen. But Hitchcock took the whole production to new heights. He purposefully downplayed any action in the first half of the film, and used lots of closeups of Janet Leigh to get the audience intimate with the “star” of the picture, only to subvert those expectations mid-way through, by having her killed.

Due to these elements and others, Psycho is the first modern day slasher film. It creates an antagonist that is psychologically scarred and who commits these heinous acts due to some past trauma in their life. The film also raises multiple expectations of frights to either downplay them or switch the expectation prior to the actual jump scare happening. Of course Hitchcock’s use of cinematic suspense is greater than many average slasher films, but he sets up the beats in the genre for others to follow. Things such as: average and normal settings, playing up suspense by focusing on the mundane, and committing acts of violence in areas where the audience feel the safest (such as the shower). And, of course, never let them see the big twist coming at the end of the film. Movies like Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street, as well as hundreds of others, benefit from these same tropes created by the master of suspense.

Like many modern horror films, Psycho is also a franchise, replete with sequels and spinoffs. Granted the sequels didn’t start until 23 years later (three years after Hitch’s death), but it’s had a steady stream of stories in and about the Bates family and their motel. Psycho II (1983) features Anthony Perkins returning as Norman Bates, who has purportedly been cured and returns to the Bates Motel to live out his life. Of course murders ensue again. Psycho III (1986) follows a similar pattern, continuing to evolve the stories of Norman and his family. Bates Motel was a 1987 TV movie with Bud Cort playing a character that had befriended Norman in the asylum and then inherited the motel. Finally Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990) took things back in time as an early prequel. These were followed by Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot remake of Psycho in 1998 and the Bates Motel TV series (2013) which ran for 5 years on A&E and continued the story of Norman’s boyhood up to the events prior to the first film.

Psycho is one of the scariest films around, even being in black and white. The shocks are still graphic today given Hitchcock’s clever editing and shooting style. The murders appear more graphic than they actually were. Imagine seeing this in theaters at the time? There was not a ratings system to prevent younger, and more susceptible viewers from seeing the film–though possibly the warnings might have deterred them. It was unlike anything else that Hitchcock had done before. He would return to slightly more graphic depictions of murders in his 1972 film Frenzy about a London rapist and serial killer. Maybe that’s why the film worked so well. Audiences didn’t expect this from the director. It is probably Psycho that audiences most closely identify with Hitchcock, even though he’s famous for at least a dozen other films. Thanks for staying up late and joining 31 Days of Horror this year, where I’ll be bringing a dose of horror history with the histrionics!

Assorted Musings

• The documentary 78/52 (2017), which stands for the 78 camera setups and 52 edits of the shower scene, gives a detailed recounting of the horror from the audience’s point of view, and the filming process from the filmmakers.
• As with many of his films, Hitchcock has a cameo early in the film (which was probably done to appease fans so they would focus on the film). He’s a man in a cowboy hat just outside Marion’s office.
• Speaking of cameo’s, the officer that opens the door to Norman’s cell at the end of the film is none other than Ted Knight! He’s more famous for his comedy roles in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, or Caddyshack.
• Janet Leigh, one of the first scream queens, gave birth to future scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis, with husband Tony Curtis.
• This film is also one of the first films to depict a toilet on screen–including having it flush. Under the Hays Code (the predecessor to the MPAA Ratings) such things were considered taboo. But Hitchcock not only liked to subvert audiences expectations, but censors as well.